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Richness and Diversity of Burial Rituals in the Upper Paleolithic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Giacomo Giacobini
Giacomo Giacobini*
Affiliation:
University of Turin

Abstract

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Among the cultural innovations by which the Upper Palaeolithic period is characterized, those relating to burial practices furnish the possibility of evaluating the profound changes which differentiated this era from the Middle Palaeolithic. The graves of the Upper Palaeolithic offer us a sometimes very compelling glimpse of the complexity of the symbolic, cognitive and social environment of those peoples, as well as of the evolution and diversification over time and space of their rituals associated with death. This article considers the set of burials discovered to date within the boundaries of Italy as particularly representative of these features. Numerous, diverse and well-endowed, they provide important information about the peoples of the Upper Palaeolithic and of the way they responded to death. These graves also represent a significant body of evidence for the debate on the degree to which Palaeolithic man can be considered culturally fully human and the extent to which he intentionally buried his dead.

Type
Articles
Information
Diogenes , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , May 2007 , pp. 19 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2007

References

Note

1. For bibliographical references to all the discoveries mentioned above, see the cumulative references section at the end of this issue. Readers are also referred to the following overview articles by Palma di Cesnola, 1993; Giacobini, 1999, 2006; and Henry-Gambier, 2001, 2005.